"Let Me Help You"

If I had a dollar for every time someone approached me and said, “Let me help you,” I’d have my student loans paid off.

I’m just kidding…I’ll never finish paying off my student loans.

Anyway, today’s topic: offering help versus forcing help on people with disabilities.

If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s okay. It’s not your fault because this isn’t a conversation we often have. It’s probably not something you encounter on a daily or even a semi-regular basis, so you likely don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to disability. And again, that’s okay.

Before my accident, I’d had very little experience with disability. In fact, while I was doing my physical rehabilitation, I would attend weekly patient education classes because I was ignorant of a great number of things and had many incorrect preconceived ideas about people with disabilities.

The patient education classes not only gave me the information I needed to function once I was home from the hospital, but they also helped me begin to understand the nature of my disability and who I could be going forward.

***

One thing we covered was how we as newly disabled people (these were classes held for people in the spinal cord injury unit, so we were all new to being paraplegics and quadriplegics) might be treated differently post-injury.

Friends, family, and strangers alike treated me differently at first. The people who knew me before my accident needed a period of adjustment just as much as I did. This was uncharted territory for all of us, and, at times, it was a rocky road to traverse.

I remember friends coming over to visit and watching me struggle to do things like take a drink of water. No one wants to see someone they care about struggle. It’s hard to watch, and most people feel an instinctive urge to help. Because if they don’t help, or at least offer, what does that say about them? That’s how one of my therapists explained it to me, anyway.

In Patient Ed, the nurses and therapists told us that many able-bodied people meant well, but were unfamiliar with what life post-injury was like. They told us people were likely to have questions and would want to help us with various everyday tasks. They warned us that this might get annoying, if not frustrating. We were also warned against letting our frustrations get the better of us.

Why? A few reasons.

1. We needed to keep in mind that the people trying to help us were coming from a good place. They were showing us kindness. If we blew up at them because we didn’t need or want help, they might hesitate to offer that kindness to someone else who needed their help.

2. Even though people want to provide help, they are often unsure of when or how to help, and that’s okay. It was our job to help people help us, to instruct others on when or how best to be of help. Again, they might take that knowledge to help someone else, and if we were jerks about it, they might not help another person who needed it.

3. Many people are unfamiliar with disabilities, so they have questions. Not everyone asks those questions, but if they do, we needed to do our best to be “ambassadors and educators” as one of the nurses put it, so try to remember that that person is coming from a place of curiosity, if not ignorance (in the sense that they don’t know something, not that they’re being in any way intolerant or discriminatory). We were advised to answer whatever questions we felt comfortable answering, and if we didn’t want to answer their questions, to politely let them know. Again, don’t be a jerk and sour someone on potentially offering help or asking questions for someone else.

See the theme emerging?

***

As of this writing, I’ve been a quadriplegic for over 16 years. Generally, I’ve found what I was told in Patient Ed was true. The vast majority of people I’ve run into who have wanted to help me have done so respectfully. They’ve been kind and willing to listen to my instructions. And if I don’t need help, I politely let them know, and they’re almost always gracious about it. I’ve also answered questions and sated people’s curiosity.

I’ll admit, not every person with a disability has had the same experience, and not every experience has been a positive one. I will also admit that I’m very open to talking about my accident, recovery, and life post-injury, while other disabled people I know are not. And that’s okay.

I must also admit to getting frustrated, annoyed, and, on rare occasions, irate over interactions with able-bodied people because they either forced their help on me or made things more difficult.

***

This brings me to the problem with the phrase, “Let me help you.”

This isn’t a question or a request. This is a command.

Even if it’s coming from a place of well-meaning, which it almost always is, it’s one of the most frustrating things I can hear. Notice I changed perspectives from first person plural (we) to first-person singular (I). That’s because what I’m about to relate are my experiences and my thoughts on the issue. It would be irresponsible and a little arrogant of me to speak for everyone living with a disability.

When I was first injured, I was completely dependent on other people for everything. I was a 22-year-old man trapped in a body that was about as capable as a 2-month-old infant.

And it sucked.

It sucked worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. But that awful feeling of complete dependency was the fuel that stoked my engines once I began physical rehab. I hated — hated — being unable to do the most basic things like brush my teeth, dress, or take a shower without help. I worked harder on rehabbing my body than I’ve ever worked on anything before.

I thought double-day practices for football were tough.

Rehab made double-days seem like getting a massage while eating donuts.

And double-days only lasted two weeks. It took a year’s worth of putting in countless hours of therapy and working with a team of amazing physical and occupational therapists in order to finally regain my independence. The first time I could use the bathroom, take a shower, and get dressed all by myself, it took me four hours, and I was an exhausted, sweaty mess afterward.

But I did it. And I didn’t need anyone’s help.

It was a major victory for me, one that I had fought hard for. It also eased a lot of the self-doubt I was dealing with. It was a milestone in my recovery that would lead to things like learning how to drive again and living independently.

Now, cut to three years ago.

I went out after a track meet with some of the kids I coach. It was a good meet for us, and many of them had set new personal best marks that day, so we went and got some celebratory frozen yogurt because 1) frozen yogurt is tasty, and 2) the State of California frowns on taking high school students out for celebratory beers. We went to one of those build-your-own, pay-by-the-ounce frozen yogurt places where you select your base yogurt and add your own toppings. Whichever toppings you want in whichever quantity you want. This is, on every conceivable front, a good thing.

After grabbing a large container, I found I had to reach up to pull the lever which would dispense the flavor of frozen yogurt I wanted. As I was repositioning my chair so I could reach it, some guy walked over, snatched the bowl from my hands, and said, “Let me help you.”

It wasn’t a question. He had already decided he was going to “help” me, and he was now holding my bowl. And though he meant well, this was the incorrect approach.

I wanted to snap at him. I wanted to vent my swelling anger all over his smiling face. I wanted to shout, “I don’t need your fucking help!” and lecture him on how hard I’d worked for my independence, on how awful it is to be treated like an infant or an invalid by a total stranger when you’re in your mid-thirties, how his forced help made me feel less-than, emasculated, and impotent, and how dare he do so in front of my athletes who would now no longer respect me as a coach or an adult.

But I remembered what the nurses in Patient Ed said. I knew that he was trying to help and be kind, and I think we can all agree, we need as much kindness in this world as we can get. And I knew that, if I unloaded on this guy, he might not offer that help to someone who actually needed it. Also, if I unleashed molten hot fury over something as seemingly trivial as frozen yogurt, what kind of example would I set for my athletes?

That, and I really wanted some build-your-own frozen yogurt.

So, I took a deep breath and just said, “Thank you. But, in the future, it would be better if you asked before you grab someone’s bowl.”

***

Now, this is one of the more extreme examples of this kind of experience.

Usually, any sort of forced help happens on a small scale. For example, often, when I’m at the grocery store, someone will just reach something off the top shelf for me. It’s not nearly as big of an issue because I’m usually about to ask them for help anyway, and I’ve yet to run into a person at a place like a grocery store who hasn’t been willing to help if I asked.

Some people sort of hover around me, waiting to be called to action. And if I don’t ask for help, sometimes they will intervene and just grab the item for me as I’m reaching for it, to which I take a small amount of offense.

However, other people will stop and ask, “Can I help?”

Again, I can only speak for myself, but someone asking “Can I help?” is vastly better than “Let me help.”

Why?

Because, if someone asks me if they can help, they’re giving me the option to say yes or no. They’re giving me the option to exercise the independence I spent years working so hard for. They’re seeing me as a person rather than as a disability.

And it’s nice to be seen as a human being — even a perpetually seated one.

***

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